371. Q&A: I’m worried no one will come to my child’s birthday party. What do I do?

Dr. Sarah (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:41):

Hello. Welcome back. We are here with Dr. Rebecca Hershberg. Welcome.

Dr. Rebecca (00:50):

Hello. Thank you.

Dr. Sarah (00:51):

So good to see you. Okay. So typically beyond the sessions segment of the securely attached podcast, we listen, we answer a listener’s question, but today we’re need a little bit differently because we’re going to do a follow-up to a previous episode that we did where we answered a listener question and made a promise to circle back, and now we are fulfilling that promise. So a while back we answered a mom’s question about why birthday parties can be so hard for, and we talked through some of the reasons that make sense and how parents can support kids who find those big social situations really overwhelming. So if that’s something your child struggles with, I’m going to link that episode of the show notes so you can go back and listen to that. But at the end of that conversation, we’re starting to talk about the flip side of that question. Let me tell me to, this is jogging your memory, Rebecca.

Dr. Rebecca (01:39):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (01:39):

But, we’re saying, okay, but what happens when it’s your kid’s birthday party and you’re really scared? No one’s going to show up. We were basically in the other episode, we were saying, it’s okay to do less. It’s okay if birthday parties are hard for your kid to go to super birthday parties. And then we were sort of holding space for that other side of like, yeah, but what about the kids where nobody shows up for their birthday parties and how heartbreaking that is. And that we sort of said, this really could be a whole episode all in its own because it really brings up a very different set of equally painful and challenging emotions like disappointment, embarrassment, heartbreak for kid for you as a parent. And so today, that is the sort of scenario that I was hoping we could dive into.

Dr. Rebecca (02:34):

Yeah, I mean, I just want to highlight the heartbreak part. It’s brutal and it’s brutal when your kids are little and it’s brutal when they’re older and it’s brutal when they’re really old and dating and they get broken up. It’s like watching our kids. There’s all this new brain research that’s fascinating that basically shows when you’re excluded socially or not part of the, it registers in the same part of the brain as physical injury, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because Dr. Yael Schore in a recent newsletter she wrote had a great quote, which is back in the day, day of caveman or whatever it is, if you were hurt emotionally and excluded from a group, you weren’t just lonely, you were lunch because it was dangerous. You’d get so…

Dr. Sarah (03:25):

You need to be in a pack to stay alive.

Dr. Rebecca (03:29):

You need to be in a pack to survive. Exactly. And so all of this is a very long way of saying that we now know that even just from a neuroscientific standpoint, that the brain is the reason why as a parent when your child is excluded, and actually I wonder if there’s research on nerding out.

Dr. Sarah (03:48):

I was like that too. I was like, Ooh, a parent existential threat because we need, we’re hardwired…

Dr. Rebecca (03:56):

Right, because our child, like does our brain light up because our child may not survive? Be that as it may, the heartbreak that you feel as a parent when your child is excluded is profound. It may, if Sarah and I have anything to say about it, light up the part of your brain that registers physical injury. I think it’s very, very real. And so anytime that you feel like as a parent, you’re being dramatic because your child doesn’t have as many friends as you want them to. And it feels awful like that awfulness has roots in evolution and is legit. So that’s kind of the first piece that I just think is really interesting and important.

Dr. Sarah (04:37):

That kind of sets the tone of this. It’s real, and our threat response…

Dr. Rebecca (04:42):

It’s real and take a moment to soothe yourself. Right, exactly. So before we get into the problem solving piece of this, it’s incredibly activating, and again, because of everything I just said that I won’t repeat, the first thing to do is to just try to soothe yourself or ground yourself or get to a place, whether it’s with the help of friends or your partner or whatever, to just be able to look at this in a less threatened way. Because if you approach this feeling so anxious and dysregulated, it’s not going to go well for you or your kid and your kid who may actually be more comfortable about the state of affairs of their social life than you. If they see that you’re so upset, they’ll take their cues from you. Wow. So I think that would be my first piece of advice to a parent who is experiencing that is just to take a deep breath and realize this is painful.

(05:39):

This is painful for a reason, and to do what you need to get support and to care of yourself. And then I would think about, again, going back to the more micro, which is this birthday party scenario. How do we want to celebrate our child’s birthday in a way that might actually help them thrive and not feel terrible? So it may be that if everyone in their class is having a party at one of these play spaces, and that’s just not going to go well for your kid because they don’t have a lot of friends or people won’t come. Or is there another way you can get them excited to celebrate their birthday? Can you go on a trip? Can you invite one or two people to a cooler baseball game? And obviously, again, I’m hearing listeners be like, but what if my kid wants the birthday party? And what if there’s no right answer to this? I mean, that’s the other thing to just say upfront. It’s not like, well then don’t do it no matter what. It’s like, well, then you do it and you just know it might be hard. And everything that we always say about dealing with hard things with our kids applies.

Dr. Sarah (06:48):

Yeah, no, I think to your point, there’s first we have to just recognize with self-compassion and self-regulation that it makes sense that this is hard for us. It makes sense. It’s hard for our kids. So that’s step one is just ground. And then there is strategize. See if there’s a way to try to, I don’t know, mitigate some of the potential fallout of nobody showing up. And we could talk about additional strategies too beyond change the venue, change the size of the group, experiment with doing something kind of smaller but more special and we’ll talk. I have other ideas, so I’d want to just pin that we can come back to strategies, but I think there’s this third phase, which is no matter what strategies you try, you can only hope for the best. You can’t control the outcome. And so still you could strategize, you could make the best laid plans, still might ultimately lead in some pain. And so then if this doesn’t feel good at the end of the day, how do we support our kid through that? How do we help them sit in their feelings but not wallow in their feelings? What’s that dance, that balance to strike between validation and acknowledgement and being with them and not trying to just make it…

Dr. Rebecca (08:28):

We’re not trying to discount their sadness and also not spending the day feeling miserable. Exactly. I think a lot also depends on the age of a kid. This is just a really different question. If you’re talking about, I mean I think under four, to me, four is the youngest that a child might have some self-awareness of their birthday party attendance. That’s why, I mean, we tried to go as long as we could without a birthday party for any kid, just because if the kid doesn’t know or want it, there are a lot of work and energy and money. So I could see a 4-year-old falling into this category younger than that. I think they have no idea what a birthday party necessarily.

Dr. Sarah (09:14):

That’s another point is know where we’re projecting our own stuff onto a situation and what is actually truly coming from our own child’s experience or our absolutely solid, very educated guess that this is likely to be our child’s experience. You have evidence to support that in some from other things.

Dr. Rebecca (09:34):

And I would say even four and five is dicey as to whether kids will necessarily fully grasp. I could see a parent grasping, I think, and you may feel otherwise, Sarah. So I’m curious what you think, but I think we’re talking about kind of what, six through nine, I think starting around 10 kids feel socially excluded in other ways for sure. But birthday parties become less of a thing. People celebrate birthdays in different ways.

Dr. Sarah (10:03):

Also 10 and has kind of navigated these waters for a few years at this point. Not just birthday parties, but maybe there’s some level of certainly awareness, but probably even in a kid who struggles with resilience around this some degree of learning and resilience that gets built up. A 10-year-old who’s had multiple experiences where kids don’t go. His birthday might very likely say, I don’t think I want to have a big birthday. I think I’d rather do, they might solve this, they may find a friend.

Dr. Rebecca (10:37):

But maybe understanding kids are fickle, but kids are fickle if they move to a new school or if some kid turned everyone against them that month.

Dr. Sarah (10:48):

True. It could be a new thing. Yeah, I’ll say I think there’s very different reasons. There’s many, many reasons why a kid could be experiencing this. There’s kids who might have more chronic social challenges where they really have just for any number of reasons, struggle to find that ability to connect and develop these really mutually rewarding relationships. And that’s where I think you might have, this is the thing we know is coming every birthday. And then I think you have those kids that maybe there was a social upset. There was something, and again, this happens I think much later, not much later, but this isn’t happening in the four or 5-year-old sector. This is elementary school later elementary school kind of stuff where you start to see mean kids stuff going on, bullying, but also social politics. And so all of a sudden you could become the out of nowhere and that’s like, oh, I’ve never dealt with this before and this is brand new, which is a whole different thing I think. And harder also always because that kid does not have a rule book yet. They don’t have a toolbox for dealing with this at all because it’s kind of like the rug gets pulled out from under that.

Dr. Rebecca (12:22):

And I think that’s a different episode. I mean, again, if we’re getting into just general social rejection and dynamics of school age kids, where to begin.

Dr. Sarah (12:37):

Oh my gosh, we literally could do an entire podcast. All podcasts. There are podcasts dedicated to that where every episode is about a different issue and they have hundreds of those episodes because kids are really good at being to each other.

(12:58):

But I do think we’re talking about a different kid. I think we’re talking, I think in my mind, the mom I’m talking to right now is the mom of the kid who’s always struggled with this and they know the birthday party is coming every year. And it’s like, how are we going to deal with this year? How are we going to deal with this year? And for that, I would say, let’s go back to the strategy piece. One thing that we haven’t talked about that I think is worth talking about is this is where I think teachers can be a real asset or ally here of reaching out to their teachers and sort of saying, Hey, are there certain kids that might have a, what’s the word I’m looking for? They’re just good social citizens. They might be a pretty flexible, easygoing kid in the classroom that generally gets along with everybody and is the kid that’s going to sit next to anybody at lunch and maybe asking the teacher, are there certain kids we could start maybe setting up a play date or two before, a couple months before this is going to happen?

(14:13):

So you can start to build some connections and then maybe even get to know the parents a bit and sort of just loop people into the fear. I think a lot of people are, if parents know that this is your fear, they are going to rally hopefully. Obviously sometimes you could just don’t luck out with the community and parents you’re around. But I think most parents would help create community.

Dr. Rebecca (14:43):

I think so too. I think so too.

Dr. Sarah (14:47):

Sometimes we’re afraid to ask for help, so painful. But I really think this is a time where finding a couple safe people in the community in your sort of ecosystem and letting them know, this is my fear. Is there something we could maybe do? They will show up.

Dr. Rebecca (15:10):

I think so I think we talk a lot about sometimes feeling as though parents are not on our side or it’s hard or I think at the end of the day, this is such a universal experience that a lot of times if you just show a tiny bit of vulnerability to another parent, actually parents will step up and be like, oh my gosh, of course, of course we’ll come to your birthday party.

Dr. Sarah (15:33):

And they might even help their own child process what might be going on and practice. Parents might not be aware that their kid, it might not be that this their kid is being mean to your kid or excluding your kid, but might does not know that your kid needs a little bit extra love. And so I think I could see a world in which if a parent in my kid’s class reached out to me and said, I’m worried it’s going to come to their birthday, not only would I be like my kid and I will be there, but I would check in with my kid a lot and be like, how do I help you help be a good friend to this kid? And so I think there’s a way to say we got each other’s backs, parents have each other’s backs, and we have each other’s kids’ backs. And so yeah, I definitely think this is a time where it can be very painful and very vulnerable, but ask for help moms or Annies together.

Dr. Rebecca (16:32):

Absolutely. And dads.

Dr. Sarah (16:34):

And dads, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Well happy birthday to everyone whose birthday is coming up and hope that this is helpful. If there are questions you guys have and you would like us to answer on the podcast, if there’s a challenge that your kid is having or that you are having in parenthood, let us know and we will do our best to just share what we can and point you in a useful direction.

Dr. Rebecca (17:01):

Absolutely. Thanks Sarah. Thanks everyone.

Dr. Sarah (17:04):

Bye.

Dr. Rebecca (17:05):

Bye.

Dr. Sarah (17:07):

Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.